


Catch Me When I Fall

by warqueenfuriosa



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I like to hurt people Cassian cares about, Love Confessions, just to have an excuse to hug him later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9263630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warqueenfuriosa/pseuds/warqueenfuriosa
Summary: When Jyn takes a flying leap into trouble, Cassian is there to catch her when she falls.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DerAdlerdesMondes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DerAdlerdesMondes/gifts).



Scarif was nothing but a blazing golden bloom burned into their minds now, lost to the past while igniting the present and the future into all-out war. Jyn’s mission was complete and she wasn’t Cassian’s responsibility anymore. But he had made a promise. All the way. As far as he was concerned, as long as there was breath in his body, he still had a promise to keep…

...just as soon as he got out of the med bay, that is.

He stared at the ceiling, sleepless in the middle of the night, his injured leg propped up on a stack of pillows, and willed himself to _heal faster, damn it._

A light knock came at his door and Jyn stepped into the room, sliding into the chair next to his bed.

“Hey,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

He sighed. “The boredom is killing me at this point.”

“Ready to get off base for a while?”

He cast a sideways glance at her. “That sounds like you have something in mind.”

“Kind of an…unofficial job.”

“You mean you don’t have permission to do whatever it is you’re planning on doing?”

“In so many words, yes.”

He let his chin drop to his chest for a moment then he nodded. “All right. I’m in.”

“You sure you don’t want to sleep instead?”

“As long as you’re off-world on unofficial business, I’m not going to sleep. And anyway, I promised, I’m with you all the way.”

He pushed off of his bed, still a little shaky from the burning pull in his bad leg. But he could hold his weight and that was good enough. Jyn said nothing, her forearms resting on her knees, silent. Finally, Cassian turned to look at her, concerned.

“What is it?” he said softly.

“That was weeks ago, Cassian,” she whispered. “Scarif is over. You kept your promise. I’m not your problem anymore.”

Cassian grabbed his boots and tugged them on, irritated that she would say such a thing.

“After all we’ve been through,” he said, “do you honestly think I see you as a problem?”

“I just meant…”

Cassian retrieved his jacket from the back of Jyn’s chair and stood over her, arms crossed.

“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be waking me up in the middle of the night for an unsanctioned mission.”

The corner of her mouth twitched slightly with the bare hint of a smile and she pushed to her feet. She stood inches away, close enough he could feel the heat radiating off of her.

“It’s dangerous,” she said, tipping her chin up to meet his gaze head on.

“I would expect nothing less.”

“You could get shot at again.”

He shrugged. “Like that’s any different from a normal day around here.”

“I was specifically told not to do this. If we get caught, you could get in trouble.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Jyn. I’ve been in plenty of trouble before you came along. Pretty sure I’ll manage, whatever happens.”

She raised an eyebrow and dipped her chin with that serious look he was coming to know so well. She pushed past him, her shoulder brushing against his forearm.

“How are your…” She paused, considering. “…powers of persuasion?” she asked, backing up towards the door.

“Better than yours. Mostly.”

“I feel like I should take offense to that.”

“That was a loaded question you already knew the answer to. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here in the middle of the night asking me to break the rules with you. Someone should be there to keep you from knocking a few heads together. I have a little more tact.”

She snorted. “Not by much. Next question. How do you feel about planting a few seeds of doubt?”

“It concerns me that you’re asking this…”

She flashed him a full on smile now and for a moment, one confusing, thrilling moment, his heart stuttered against his rib cage. She looked like she was…glowing. Her eyes were bright and mischievous and there was a bounce to her step. The Rebellion was really, really good for her. She had a purpose now, a place to come back to, a home. Even if she didn’t want to call it that, even if she threatened that maybe she’d leave someday in the future when she wasn’t useful anymore and it was time to move on…she still liked it here. Whether she wanted to admit it or not.

“Are you with me?” she said, sliding the door open.

He didn’t miss a beat.

“All the way.”

[][][]

The planet of Wayland was covered with a carpet of thick green, save for the river gorge that snaked through the forests. Tall, old trees were draped in vines and mosses like robes. Butterflies in every color tossed and dipped around the ship as Cassian flew low over the treetops. Jyn stood behind him, gripping the back of his seat, and occasionally, when he nosed the ship downward, she leaned into him, warm and soft, her breath fanning over the top of his head.

“There,” she said, stretching across him to point at a small brown spot on the horizon to the left of the windshield. “That’s the village. Just beyond that should be where the new droid manufacturing plant will…”

Before she could finish, it came into view. The land had been stripped of trees, the ground scraped away and flattened. The foundations had already been laid, like black teeth bitten into the fragile earth. A handful of Stormtroopers were scattered around the area, none of them looking particularly alert. And why should they? Wayland was a tiny planet and the few inhabitants who lingered were practically tree dwellers. They had no desire or means to fight back. Wayland was easy pickings for the Imperial army.

“It would not be wise to land so close to Imperial forces,” K2 said.

“There was a waterfall a few miles back,” Cassian replied as he brought the ship up and back around. “We can land there, keep the ship hidden while we talk to the locals.”

“I suppose this means I am not to accompany you. Again.”

Cassian cast an apologetic look in K2’s direction. “The locals have been bullied enough by the Imperial army. The last thing they need to see right now is an Imperial droid.”

“But my programming isn’t Imperial.”

“They won’t know that.”

K2 poked a few buttons on the console. “I do not appreciate staying behind.”

“Sorry K-Two. It’s nothing personal.”

K2 stared at the console for a moment longer then looked at Cassian. “Do I get a blaster this time? I believe that would be fair since you insist on taking me places and leaving me behind.”

Cassian nodded. “If that’ll make you happy, then yes.”

“I am a droid. I have no concept of human emotion. But it is logical and I would be more useful with a blaster when you run into trouble, as the two of you inevitably will.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, K-Two,” Cassian said, smiling and shaking his head.

Cassian eased the ship down into a meadow across from the waterfall. As he rose from his seat and turned, he found Jyn still standing right there, inches away, crowded into the small space of the cockpit. She looked up and didn’t move away as she plucked at the lapel of his jacket.

“You should probably get rid of that,” she said. “In case you’re seen with all those Rebel patches and you’re reported before we even reach the village.”

He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. “Better?”

He could have sworn her gaze dropped from his face to the hollow of his throat, exposed by the open collar of his shirt. But then she stepped back and she was looking away, moving towards the door and Cassian wondered if maybe he had imagined it...

The hike to the village took almost an hour. It was only a mile, maybe two, but the thin ribbon of trails snaking through the underbrush branched off and looped back so many times, they continually got lost, forced to retrace their steps.

“Why did you ask me?” Cassian said over his shoulder. It had been bothering him for a while but Jyn could be wily when she wanted to and he didn’t think she was likely to answer the question anyway.

“Ask you what?” Jyn replied.

He glanced back at her but she wasn’t looking at him, instead focused on keeping an eye on the surrounding landscape for signs of life or watching the uneven footing of the trail.

“You could have vanished in the middle of the night to talk to these people all on your own. So why did you ask me to come?”

“I needed a pilot.”

Cassian huffed a laugh. “Of course. Stupid question.”

“Regretting your decision?”

It was meant as a jab, a playful one, a little jest to pass the time and ease the boredom. Cassian heard it though, the hitch in her voice, small, barely there, but there all the same.

He turned to face her. She kept walking for a step or two, focused as she was on picking her way over a tangle of exposed tree roots before she realized he had stopped. He waited until she looked up at him, eyebrows raised in a silent question.

“No I’m not,” he said, gentle yet firm. “And I’ll continue to…”

A noise, soft and muted by the forest, made him stop. He spun, searching the surrounding trees, one hand drifting outstretched in Jyn’s direction. She inched towards him, back to back, until their shoulders touched and Cassian’s fingers curled around Jyn’s wrist.

The noise came again, sharper this time but still echoing through the trees, disorienting with its endless echo, swallowed by the underbrush.

“It’s a child,” Jyn said.

And she took off running.

“Jyn, wait!” Cassian called.

But she was already disappearing into the forest. Cassian growled and chased after her.

After a minute or two, the trees opened up onto the gorge with a thin river bubbling far, far below. Cassian burst out of the forest in time to see Jyn heart-stoppingly close to the cliff’s edge, peering over the side.

“Cassian!” she said. “There’s a little girl down there. She’s barely holding on.”

Cassian swallowed his frustration with her for running off as concern took over. Jyn caught his elbow in a bruising grip as he looked over the edge too. A little girl, maybe seven years old in a dark brown tunic and barefoot, clung to the rocks, crying quietly, her arms trembling with the effort it was taking to hold on.

Jyn broke away and started tearing through the forest until she stopped at the base of a tree, draped with thick vines. She yanked on one and it didn’t budge.

“Cassian, over here,” she said, pulling with all her weight on the vine.

He pushed through the underbrush to get to her and helped her tug on the vine until it dropped to the ground in a heap. Together, they hauled it to the edge of the cliff and tossed one end over. But the little girl couldn’t let go, couldn’t grab on to the vine that trailed right next to her hands.

Jyn laid flat on her stomach and leaned over the edge.

“Jyn, be careful,” Cassian hissed.

“I’ll be fine,” she said over her shoulder. She turned back to the little girl. “Just grab on. It’s okay.”

The little girl only shook her head and cried harder. Jyn pushed herself to her feet, latched onto the vine, and started easing herself over the edge.

“Jyn!” Cassian barked as he scrambled to get a tighter grip on the vine. “What the hell are you doing?”

“She’s terrified, Cassian,” Jyn said. She hardly paused in her decent over the side, the toes of her boots balancing on the edge of the rocks. “And she’s so small. She can’t hold on much longer.”

“A little warning would be appreciated before you go flinging yourself over the side of a cliff.”

She met his gaze with a slight smile. Then she was going over the edge, inching backwards, disappearing out of sight. Cassian braced himself, wrapping the end of the vine around his middle, ignoring the bite of the rough bark against his skin.

It seemed as if hours crept by as Cassian stood at the top of the cliff, the burn of the vine cutting into him, his legs and arms trembling from holding Jyn’s weight as carefully as he could to keep her from dropping countless feet to her death. His bad leg was screaming in protest as he dug his heels into the dirt.

“Got her!” Jyn called and Cassian blew out a breath of relief. “Pull us up!”

Cassian hauled with everything he had, dragging Jyn back up to get her feet on solid ground as fast as he could. The vine chaffed at his middle and his hands were starting to bleed but he didn’t care. He backed up until the top of Jyn’s head appeared over the cliff’s edge and he kept pulling and pulling until she crawled over the side, the little girl clinging to her back.

Jyn rose to her hands and knees and glanced at Cassian with a grateful smile and a nod. _I’m okay._

Then her gaze shifted past him and her smile faded. She scrambled to her feet and the little girl slid to the ground.

Cassian turned. Two men came creeping out of the forest wearing the same brown tunics the children wore…and carrying blaster pistols. So the locals did have a means to defend themselves then.

The weight of his own blaster rested at his hip. Two to one odds. He’d faced worse before. But there was a child present and that made him nervous, made him hesitate.

“Let the child go,” one man said.

The little girl whimpered. “No, Papa…”

Cassian held his hands up in surrender, angling his body in front of Jyn as best he could to shield her.

“Don’t move,” the man said.

Cassian stopped. “We heard the little girl…your daughter…crying and…”

“We know who you are,” the second man said. “You pushed her, didn’t you?”

“What?” Jyn said. “No, we…”

“We saw your ship,” the first man said. “We were warned about you, that you’d come and poison our children against us.”

“That’s not…”

“You’re part of the Rebellion, yes?”

“We just came to talk,” Cassian said.

The first man gritted his teeth. “Meera, come here.”

The little girl hesitated then tiptoed towards her father. He pushed her behind him and backed up into the trees.

“You won’t touch my daughter again,” he said, low and dangerous. “We want nothing to do with your Rebellion.”

It happened so fast. The man clutched his daughter with one hand at the same time he pulled the trigger. Cassian tensed, waiting for the burn of the blast to hit him. But it never came. A different blow hit him instead.

The sound of Jyn’s surprised gasp of pain.

He turned just in time to see her tip backwards, rocked off balance by the force of the shot, her boots scraping for purchase in vain with a hiss of gravel and a squeak of moss. Then she was airborne.

Falling.

Cassian surged forward, hand outstretched, fingers straining in desperation. He slid on his knees to the very edge, his stomach churning at the gaping empty space that opened before him, ready and waiting to swallow him down and spit out his bones.

And his fingers closed around Jyn’s wrist.

But Jyn was still falling, pulled down by her momentum, and so was Cassian. He jerked forward, almost dragged over the edge too. He barely had time to throw out his free hand and dig his fingernails into the dirt and the rocks and the moss to anchor himself before he hit the ground flat on his stomach, the air punched out of him with the bite of the cliff’s edge.

Jyn was still swinging, dangling in midair, and she couldn’t stop the inevitable arc of her body, a pendulum suspended by Cassian’s grip, slick with blood and sweat. She hurtled towards the cliff face with no way to stop herself, her entire side exposed as it was with Cassian holding onto her. She hit the cliff face full on, rocks crunching against bone with a spray of loose pebbles that skittered down…down…down….

Jyn cursed, explosive and loud, echoing through the gorge as pain blossomed in her side and her shoulder. Cassian growled, eyes screwed shut, bottom lip clamped between his teeth as he struggled to maintain his grip on Jyn’s wrist. But the vine had shredded his hands and the terror that had spiked through his heart of seeing Jyn fall over the edge were working against him, turning his grip into an impossibly slippery mess.

“Jyn,” he said, voice trembling and tight. “Give me your other hand.”

“I can’t,” she replied. “My shoulder…”

She tried to reach for the cliff face for purchase but she winced with a grunt of pain. A small black hole singed her shirt and he could see the angry red flesh beneath, blistered and burned.

Then he felt it. The tiniest budge of his fingers, the slide of her wrist through his palm. She was slipping.

_No._

Cassian gritted his teeth. He risked a glance over his shoulder, even though it meant the horrifying feel of another fraction of Jyn’s skin disappearing from his grasp. The two men still lingered, the little girl watching wide eyed and silent.

“Please,” he said. “We need your help.”

The first man stared back, cold and hard. Silent.

Jyn’s weight shifted, drawing Cassian’s attention back to her. She was trying to wedge the toes of her boots into the cliff face, searching for some way to support herself so she wasn’t dangling in midair. But the more she scrabbled for a foothold, the more rocks tumbled out from under her and the further she slipped….

“Jyn, stop,” Cassian said. “The more you move, the harder it is to hold on.”

He glanced over his shoulder again, not bothering to be calm or diplomatic this time when his heart was thundering in his chest like this, galloping at full speed.

“We’ll leave,” he said. “Right now. We won’t come back. Just help her.”

The first man came forward and towered over Cassian and for a moment, Cassian thought this was it. This man, this stranger full of hatred towards the Rebellion, would pitch them both over the cliff.

Then he reached down and stripped the pistol from Cassian’s belt. He tossed the pistol aside but Cassian didn’t see what happened after that because Jyn slid, so, so far, terrifyingly far, until he held just her fingertips now.

“Goddamn it,” he hissed. “No. Jyn, try to…”

She raised her head and the look in her eyes made the words catch in Cassian’s throat, silent and unsaid.

“You’re right,” she said.

“What?”

“I didn’t need a pilot today.”

“Really not a good time to talk about this.”

“I needed you. Thank you for being there, Cassian. All the way.”

And she was gone. His fingers were ice cold and empty without the warmth of her skin. And she was falling…falling…falling... Tossed like a rag doll then crumpled on the canyon floor, body twisted and broken.

Cassian surged to his feet and turned on the man still threatening him with a blaster pistol. Before the man could pull the trigger, Cassian knocked the gun aside and swung, carried on the burn of his anger, the horror of watching Jyn slip from his grasp and fall. His fist connected with the man’s jaw and knocked him flat to the ground.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he thundered. “She saved that little girl. _Your_ daughter. And you wouldn’t help her.”

The second man raised his pistol to fire but Cassian was already crossing the space between them, yanking the pistol from his hesitant fingers and delivering a second right hook to put him on the floor too.

Cassian scooped up his own pistol and headed over the cliff face, picking his way down the rocks that shifted and threatened to give way. The locals would be after him now but he wasn’t leaving this godforsaken planet without taking Jyn’s body home.

When Cassian finally reached the ground, he spotted her half lying in the water. He turned away for a moment, steeling himself for what he had to do, before he looked back…

…and her fingers twitched.

Cassian’s breath hitched in his throat. He didn’t dare hope she could have survived that fall but the hope blossomed in his chest anyway and sent him scrambling towards her carefully. As he crept to her side, his hand hovered over her stomach, not quite touching her, more than a little concerned at the unnatural angle of too many of her limbs.

Then Jyn sucked in a wet breath and her eyes fluttered open, staring away from him. A small strangled noise of relief tore from Cassian and he placed his hands on either side of Jyn’s face, carefully, so very, very carefully, turning her head towards him.

“Hey, hey, look at me, Jyn,” he whispered, forcing his voice to stay calm despite the stutter of terror and hope at war in his chest. She was alive. She was alive but just barely, struggling for each labored breath.

Her mouth opened on a ragged, pained gasp and blood stained her teeth, painted her lips.

“Easy,” Cassian said. “Take it easy.”

Her eyes shifted back and forth, back and forth then finally her gaze settled on him and she blinked, once, twice as she focused. He nodded.

“That’s it. Keep those beautiful eyes on me, there you go.”

He glanced up the cliff face but the locals weren’t looking down at him. It would be useless to ask them for help but his options were severely limited and he couldn’t afford to be picky now.

“Jyn,” he said softly. “I’m going to get K2 and a stretcher, okay? I’ll be…”

“Please,” she wheezed.

He stopped, waiting as she fought to piece together what she wanted to say and breathe at the same time.

“Please…don’t leave.”

Cassian’s chest ached at that and he brushed a lock of damp hair away from her cheek with his thumb.

“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart,” he whispered. “All the way, remember?”

She blinked slowly and managed the smallest, tiniest smile. “All…the way.”

There was only one option left then. He couldn’t leave her, not after that. And even if he did, the locals might find her before he returned.

Another thought lurked at the back of his mind, a dark thought he didn’t want to look at, didn’t want to bring into the light. The thought that maybe…she wouldn’t be breathing when he got back, she wouldn’t be looking at him the way she is now. And he would never be able to live with himself if he left her to die alone.

Cassian eased one hand away from Jyn, careful not to jostle her too much, and unclipped the radio from his belt.

“K2,” he said. “Jyn’s hurt. Bad.”

“Would you like me to fetch a medical kit for you?”

“No, contact the base and have a medical team ready. And move the ship to the end of the gorge.”

“The gorge, Captain?”

“She fell, K-Two. We’re in the gorge but it’s too narrow. You can’t get the ship down here. So wait for me at the mouth of the gorge.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cassian returned his attention to Jyn, edging just a tiny bit closer to her.

“Jyn, sweetheart,” he said, “this is going to hurt like hell but you stay awake, got it?”

Her head dipped slightly in a nod. He took her hand and pulled her arm around his neck. Slowly, he eased his arms under her and she shifted, only a few inches, but it drew a broken noise from her lips all the same.

Cassian’s stomach surged up his throat at the sight of more blood staining her lips, spilling from her mouth. She must have punctured a lung in the fall and it wouldn’t be long before she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all.

Cassian pressed a kiss to her forehead, lingering for a moment or two, his eyes closed, before he gritted his teeth and lifted Jyn into his arms.

She screamed. The agonizing sound sent an icy finger of dread shredding down every nerve in his spine.

“Stay with me, Jyn,” he said, heading south along the canyon. “Keep your eyes open. Don’t go to sleep.”

It was brutal, walking the canyon, picking his way over slick rocks and through the ice cold water. Jyn might be small but her limp weight put a strain on Cassian’s back and shoulders, as if his muscles were slowly being pulled apart. But he didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. He kept walking and he kept talking, willing Jyn to stay awake, just a minute more, please, please, please.

The gorge flattened out and opened up and K2 was waiting, the ship’s engine rumbling low on idle with the door open. Cassian stepped inside and sank to the floor, his body aching from the push, his bad leg burning.

“Go, K2,” he said. “Now.”

Cassian sat with his back to the wall and settled Jyn on his lap, one arm hooked around her waist, his other hand supporting her head as she sucked in another weak breath. Her gaze drifted over the ceiling of the ship for a moment then shifted to him, jerky and disoriented. He managed a soft smile.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “You’re doing so good, sweetheart.”

Her hand curled up over his arm, her fingertips pressing into him with the smallest, faintest pressure. She was still holding on, still fighting. But her eyes were growing glassy and distant, squeezing Cassian’s heart with a cold fist of dread.

Then her breath snagged again and this time a second one didn’t follow and the panic flashed in her eyes. She tipped her head back, gasping, struggling to pull in air. Her fingers curled into Cassian’s sleeve so tightly he was tugged towards her for a moment before her grip went slack and her body sagged.

She blinked once. And her eyes drifted closed.

Cassian went still. “No,” he whispered.

He took Jyn’s face in his hands and patted her cheek.

“No, just breathe, come on. Take another breath for me, Jyn.”

But Jyn didn’t move. Her eyes stayed closed, her body still and silent. And it was wrong, so, so wrong on her. From the moment Cassian met her, she had been fighting, fighting him, fighting K2, fighting anyone and everyone who got in her way. Now she was too quiet and it was wrong. Horribly, terribly, impossibly wrong.

“Please wake up,” he pleaded.

He hovered a hand above her mouth and nose for a telltale warm breath but there was nothing. He pressed a hand to her neck looking for a pulse but again, there was nothing. And the realization finally slammed into his gut.

“Oh god no,” he said. “Not you too, Jyn, please, no.”

He pulled her close, his face pressed to her shoulder, his eyes screwed shut at the feel of her limp body in his arms. He held her achingly tight, the way he did on Scarif when they started a war together, the way he should have held her all this time before now.

A handful of tiny words slipped from his lips, mumbled against her neck, sweet and soft and broken.

“I never should have let you go.”

[][][]

Cassian dozed off in a chair in the med bay, his head resting on his arms propped against Jyn’s bed. Somehow Jyn’s stubbornness carried her through the hellishly long flight back to base and when the medical team found the thinnest, weakest pulse, Cassian had almost sobbed with relief.

Three days had passed and Jyn was still asleep, still hanging on, and Cassian didn’t leave her side. He cradled his hand in hers, his thumb skimming over her knuckles. He never realized just how small she was until he saw her thin pale hand resting against his broad, tanned fingers. He’d become so used to her fiery presence in life that he didn’t notice how fragile she was underneath all her fight, just skin and bones and breath.

By the fourth day, he woke to a hand resting against the back of his head, soft fingers tangled in his hair. For a moment, he thought he was dreaming until he smelled the med bay, stale and sharp, and his head snapped up.

Jyn smiled at him, tired, worn out, and hazy, but there was a spark in her eyes too. As he straightened, her hand fell away from his head and dropped to his shoulder. He caught her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her fingers.

“Good morning to you too,” she rasped, voice barely more than a rustle in the silence.

“You made it,” he said, smiling against the tightness in his throat and the burn behind his eyes. “Thought we’d lost you a couple times there.”

“Didn’t think…you’d be…rid of me that easy, did you?”

“Came pretty close to it, Jyn, too close.”

She sank a little deeper into the pillows and closed her eyes with a sigh. Cassian’s smile faltered and he leaned forward as his fingers tightened even more around hers. For days, he was so sure Jyn wouldn’t open her eyes. And when she finally did, to see that spark, familiar and alive…he never wanted to see her eyes closed again.

“I knew,” Jyn whispered.

Cassian frowned. “Knew what?”

Slowly, she opened her eyes and fixed him with a steady gaze.

“I knew you’d be there to catch me.”

Cassian went still and he couldn’t say anything for a few seconds. He shook his head and dropped his gaze to the bed. Jyn brought her other hand up to rest against the top of his head, smoothing over his hair.

“Cassian,” she whispered.

He didn’t move, just kept staring at the white sheets, keeping Jyn’s fingers in a death grip.

“Cassian,” Jyn repeated softly. “Look at me.”

Finally, he raised his head. “I didn’t,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I didn’t catch you.”

“Yes you did.”

“You fell, Jyn. You almost di…”

His voice cracked and he swallowed that last word, the word he couldn’t say.

“You broke my fall,” Jyn said. “If you hadn’t caught me, I never would have survived.”

“You slipped through my fingers. Again.”

Jyn made no reply. She watched him for a moment then very, very quietly, said, “Again?”

Cassian took in a trembling breath and closed his eyes before he met her gaze. Butterflies exploded in his stomach at the look on her face, calm and serene.

She _knew._

She knew exactly what he was going to say. Her smile grew, just a little, and she nodded.

“I heard you,” she said. “I heard every word you said and you’re damn right. You never should have let me go. And I never should have let you go either.”

The heartbeat of a pause seemed to stretch between them as they looked at each other, soft smiles on their lips, hands clasped bruisingly tight. Then Jyn tugged on his hand.

“Get over here,” she whispered.

Cassian pushed out of his chair and settled on the edge of the bed. He leaned over her and braced his hand just next to her hip, careful to not touch her. The memory of her broken body in his arms was still horrifically clear in his mind and he wanted to touch her, to feel the life warming her skin, but he was scared to touch her too, in case he hurt her even more.

Jyn reached up, trailing two fingers along his jawline and over his lips, down his chin, before disappearing into the collar of his shirt and coming to rest there in the middle of his chest.

Hesitantly, Cassian tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, his thumb skimming over her cheekbone. She smiled up at him as his hand settled against her cheek, his fingers buried in her hair. So very carefully, he touched his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. She still smelled faintly of earth and forest, a sharp reminder that would never fail to turn his stomach. Her breath ghosted over his skin, light and warm. He smiled slightly at the realization that she was alive and he could _finally_ touch her the way he wanted to and never let her go.

Then Jyn tipped her chin up and kissed him, only a brush of her lips against his. And his fingers tightened at the lingering barely there taste of her, dizzying and sweet. Her hand slid down his chest and to his side, curled tight into his shirt. She pulled him closer and Cassian nearly lost his balance at how surprisingly strong and insistent she was.

“Take it easy,” he said, laughing a little against her mouth.

She made a small sound of frustration but he bumped his nose against hers with a soothing kiss.

“You need to rest,” he said.

“I’ll do that later.”

She caught the collar of his shirt, ready to tug him closer. He took her hand away but he didn’t let go, just held her hand, stroking his thumb back and forth over her wrist.

“You fell off a cliff, Jyn,” he said in a gentle tone. “And you’ve been unconscious for days. You’re not doing a damn thing until you’re better.”

She sighed and sank back into her pillows. “Will you stay? For a little while?”

He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm. “I never left, sweetheart.”

A smile blossomed across her face as she closed her eyes and fell asleep, her breathing steady and even, if a little shallow with lingering pain, and her fingers tightened around his.

[][][]

Jyn wasn’t released from the med bay for a month. The medics wanted to keep her a little longer, especially for the myriad of broken bones in her body, but she was up and moving before anyone could stop her and anyone who dared to try nearly got smacked by her crutches as she plowed on, ignoring them. Her mind was made up and she knew exactly what she wanted.

Cassian sat on the edge of his bed, pulling off his boots at the end of the day, when his door opened and Jyn stood there, wobbling slightly on her crutches. Cassian shot to his feet, arms outstretched towards her.

“Jyn, what the hell are you doing out of the med bay?” he demanded.

She dropped her crutches and stumbled towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He caught her as she half-fell into his arms, barely able to support her own weight.

“Sick of that place,” she muttered into his shoulder. “Don’t tell me to go back because I won’t do it.”

“Jyn,” Cassian breathed, closing his eyes and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I learned a long time ago, when you’ve made up your mind, no one can tell you what to do.”

He felt her smile against his shoulder. “Good.”

She nudged at his earlobe with her nose and leaned into him, coaxing him backward. He pulled her down to the bed and never released his grip on her hand as he crawled in next to her, tucking the blankets around them into a tight, warm cocoon. The low hum of activity from the base was far away as they wrapped themselves around each other, holding each other.

Falling…

Falling…

Falling…

…into sleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the inspiration for this fic really did come in the form of sitting bolt upright in bed at 3am and whispering, "I'm going to throw Jyn off a cliff!"  
> Special thank you to somewhere-at-sea for being an awesome beta reader. Commission for DerAdlerdesMondes who is a total sweetheart and an absolute joy to write for XOXO


End file.
